


The Roar of the Greasepaint - The Smell of the Crowd

by ThereminVox



Category: Joker (2019)
Genre: Eventual Smut, F/M, Joker appears more than Arthur because I’m a slut for him mainly oops, Maybe this will be the story I actually focus on and finish, Slow Burn, hmmmmm
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-22
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:35:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21893008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThereminVox/pseuds/ThereminVox
Summary: Inspired in title by one of his favourite comedians, Arthur Askey, ‘Big-Hearted Arthur’ is what Arthur Fleck would later be addressed and praised as in comedy clubs across the nation. Perhaps even globally, if ambition served him well.However, as chance and reality would have it, the planets and stars were misaligned. Celestial bodies dismembered by the axis, untethered to the pulse of a heavenly glow. Arthur and his staunch relationship with gravity was descending down a rapid slope to divorce.Until a recent course of metamorphosis leads to critical transition, Arthur would have surely settled to endure the spirit of Atlas, a punishing weight upon brittle shoulders.As the jester’s role would have it, each encounter was a compromising act. Every intimate embrace, whether hostile or affectionate, an added rung to the ladder of performance.Chants from the audience, cheers and jeers alike...A swan song.
Relationships: Arthur Fleck/Original Female Character(s), Joker/Original Female Character(s)
Kudos: 8





	1. Your Sacrifice Is My Evolution

* * *

  
  


Analog clocks ticking. 

Digital clocks beeping. 

Television static in stuttered transmission.

Fire alarms shrieking to no definite end throughout the borders and closing corridors. 

Even his own wretched laugh triggered the misophonia. The inverse siren of summoning for vengeful angels. A symphony of sensitivity screeching through his ear canals, pleading respite. Wounded, ovine creatures bleating for signs of connection beyond the dangerous uniformity of their own breed. Sweat, as distinguished from harvested tears. A body bound not by the heavy cloak of despair. Rather, a head bowed in acceptance of crown. Reflections of spectacle perched above sallow cheeks. Yet alive with a spark of youth piercing the veiled iris. 

Arthur glares at the imposing sequence of 4 digits with glazed, insouciant eyes. Conserving the vital energy needed to confront Hoyt for his delayed presence in five consecutive business days. Given recent events, his unpunctuality was a fair and forgiven religion. Productivity had been increased tenfold for him in the past several days, due to conscious efforts in meticulous planning. However, it was not weeks ago that Arthur had been booted. Indeed, he was but a mere redundancy in employment. The phone booth, and its fatal call of kismet, would ever be etched as a tainted, staining blood seal, weakening the structure of conscience. His thoughts, a farrago of moral decay yet to betray a man falling prey to depravity. Be that as it may, time, as of late, was evolving to a concept of dubious decline. Commencing a swift and decided journey to declivity. 

Notwithstanding, today was a special day for the man in the shattered mirror, in particular. Whilst taking a drag from his morning smoke, it prompts Arthur to wonder. To entertain the thought of his once exalted boss encircled and protected by a vigilant and aiding support system. A wake of vultures, a kettle of janissaries, of thickened blood, from which the arid pores would weep at his sudden loss, seeking to exact penance against the senseless violence inflicted upon him. Would they show remorse for said villain if they knew the reason for such lethal damage?

The mentally ill loner.

Bereaved by his fellow man.

Never quite akin in semblance from conception.

Surely, by this very fact or act, his stilted performance could be pardoned. Surely, he could not have been conceived as anything less than a fallen angel, struggling to adapt to an unnatural habitat. The unforgiving land of gods and monsters. With wings clipped, stranded to limp, he is a god’s begotten son, forsaken. To grieving mothers, forgotten. A hapless boy in the springtime of life, equipped defenseless with an unloaded gun, from which the god assures him victory against weapons aimed, before imploring him to run.

Fortunate for Arthur, today was the day to raise a dual-edged sword against those corrupted gods and mindless monsters. With Randall exampled as Hanged Man, the crusade was only just beginning. Henceforth, his rhythmic pulse drums emphatic against the thermal expanse of wiry chest, enthralled, erratic, yet all the same calm and steady for the bittersweet confection wafting from the oven. A baking fever of contentment riddled with smiling cavities. Giddy from the fleeting yet potent high of nicotine, seasoned fear and anticipation. 

Impossibly wide, his grin grows. A ghosting caress of mania tickling the corners of his lip. Sat at his desk, face bare to vacant audience, shielded from the radiation emanating from a choir of jeers and jabs, he takes a longing look to the canvas of incohesive doodles, lewd images, and diverse layers of handwriting, paralysed in a haze of reverie.

Routinely, with acute muscle memory, a mnemonic note is etched in his jokebook, lead of the tapered pencil as durable in touch as the growing confidence he fosters. At the drawing board, in Penny’s desolate living room, dregs of nocturne chime the witching hour in tandem with ethereal hist. Trumpets singing. Imminent echoes of mirage in the distance. A heady, gentle reminder for the ease of vice. Injecting his veins with a drug of arrant substance come tomorrow. 

_Tomorrow._

Perhaps, tomorrow, he decides, the invasive odour of nonenal would be less insistent to criminalise him. Effectively masked by a sibling’s confused mixture of ingredients, dispersing distinct from tobacco and rotting gangrene. 

A few loafing moments of ticking deliberation, placid and flâneur, drift idle. In the following second, a heaving swell of medicated respiration relieves the lungs. Tendrils of sedated comfort expelled from the pneuma through mutual exchange. Here, in this drafty expanse of cheap and dazed horrors, each night brings a freight of dream in place of nightmare. Thereby, hidden within each lonely crevice, beneath every ashen carpet and blemished tile, the arbiter and jury have retired their torment, ceasing to accost the conscience with guilty plaint, ceasing the hiss that bellows in relentless chant, provocative lure in the abyss, cheesing, teasing, with mischief gleaming. 

How risible, he weens, to have Randall silenced with only a pair of rusty scissors, further enabled to corrosive ruin by perspired adrenaline. Such ripened memory, when regressed to a pulp of swirling adjectives, conjures the ill image of a pig at slaughter, sickly in heart, feral in mind. Thus disposed to (in)humane release.

What a joke it would be, he thinks.

To enact a similar strike against his next victim, pencil sharpened to whetted blade...

**_Your sacrifice is my evolution._ **

_  
Would be child’s play._

  
  



	2. Child’s Play

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My OC won’t be making an appearance until later. (Hopefully soon lol.) In any case, sorry if the descriptive language/figure of speech is a bit excessive/abstract. It’s my preferred/natural writing style but I’m attempting to make more simple prose. Emphasis on ‘trying’ lol

* * *

Anxious. 

It was far too early to be this anxious. 

Criminally premature, one could say. 

Just outside the parameters of Ha-Ha’s, a pinched man of average height, no older than thirty-nine, could be observed pacing about, palms sweaty in flexing, clenching and unclenching for a moment’s rest. With no cigarettes in pocket and a stubborn refusal to bum, he swears under his breath, receiving looks of equal disgust and concern as he embodies the pneuma of a patient escaped from bedlam. 

In the still processing sequence of dichotomy, he’s tangled between a fine thread of self-conscious friction and fluid focus on his intended motive. 

_C’mon Art._

_You did it with Randall._

_You can do it now._

Certainly, he could...

Surely, he should. 

Perhaps, the hilt of his stationery shiv would be embedded sooner, if not for one glaring issue. Whereas Randall was bait to be lured into the seclusion of his home, concealed from prying eyes, the hour of _now_ spelled a more daring challenge. To kill a man behind closed doors may have been an act of cowardice, at worst. At best, the only effective approach in a world increasingly dominated by punishing surveillance. 

In the midst of invasive glances and rife suspicion, he considers his options thoroughly, attempting to shed the veering bind of neurosis. 

How hard could it be to murder a man in broad daylight? Not especially so, if regarding the act alone. Evading hundreds of witnesses was another matter entirely. Unlike the precession of brazen sacrifice he’s offered under a pale Sun, the brilliance of its radiant form now reveals itself beyond the shield of four hushed walls. 

His heart flutters with bridled fear. Veins pulsating the rivers of ill humour. Helpless to primitive urge and instinct, to awkward gait he succumbs, to fidgeting fingers, and unsolicited smiles, stretching his mouth almost painfully with deranged taste. There was nothing deranged about what he and his private audience were about to witness. This is how he convinces himself. 

To ascend up these stairs for the final time is a matching feat to the steady climb of Sisyphus but one that seems no more sole-crushing than his eloquent descent to freedom. By unsteady conviction, he grips the pencil with purchase. Each digit wraps around, bony and loose, firm only in wavering verve. For a brief spell, he has reverted back to the thoughtform of a schoolboy. His plan of action is hasty but not thoughtless. 

Already, the commotion of happy hour reaches his ears, swirling its tongue against the drum with a beat of disdain. Hoyt’s shrill voice cleaves through the still air, distinct and averting. With his current progression, Arthur’s steps begin to falter, closer in purpose yet distant from resolve. His role as prey appears to dissolve as a wayward child, eviscerated to presentation as fodder to mistaken predator. 

Until a warm collision arrests his unimposing figure, Arthur was deaf and blind to the rows of bodies passing by. The single brush of his intrusion, abnormally short in stature, shakes him from distraction. 

“Arthur?” The voice, muffled from below. Gary’s soft pitch of disbelief fails to register until his voice raises to an audible rebuke, repeating his name with increased volume. 

“ _Arthur_ …” Fucking Gary, of all people. “The fuck are you doing here, mate?”

The urgency laced in his tone mildly enrages Arthur. Of course, he, himself, was no better. A part of him envisions the brunt of a donkey’s hoof knocking sense into his addled head. Admittedly, that arrow of vexation was misdirected. A mere projection of his own juvenile approach. With his malnourished physique, slouching posture, hands twined behind his back, rocking slightly on his heels in agitation, he settles upon the pedestal of a caricature.

“Hey, Gary.” Feigning social courtesy, he greets him amicably, pretending to be engaged with an old friend, from which the truth was not so estranged. A smile, sharp and tight, splits his face with sheer effort of sincerity. 

Where fiction dominated the four hemispheres of Arthur’s brain, Gary provides an ample dose of reality, nervously glancing between Arthur and the dangerous proximity of Arthur’s target practice standing several centimeters behind his inadequate person, directly ahead of Arthur’s plastic stare. 

“ _Arthur, you can’t be here._ ” His hissing whisper as meagre and unconvincing as his stature. Arthur thinks he should express a margin of shame for belittling him… but, as it stands, comedy was indiscriminate. As such, the gallows scorch of branding mark leaves much to be desired for his charred conscience. 

“ _Gary…_ ” The man of subject gives a puzzled look in response to his drawn, patronising tone. “I know what I’m doing.” Cocking his head with a childish lilt. “Why I’m here....” Sighing in exasperation. Desperate to be free from this weapon of skepticism. “It doesn’t matter.”

With that, he bids a swift but pleasant adieu to the much shorter man, reaching no higher than his hip. As warm as could be exchanged between parties of dubious relation. Perhaps, he was right. Perhaps Arthur was foolish for returning here expeditiously, if not risibly unprepared, a gangling funambulist, fumbling along the tightrope of a fool’s errand.  
  


Patting Gary’s head as a father would to his son, placating the bristled pet with fleeting brush, “But, I appreciate the concern.” 

Arthur passes by, a stranger; a missionary on a wayward quest to transformation. Could he trust Gary as a companion? Maybe. Could he trust him enough in that intimacy to not betray his infantile vice? A loafing question mark. 

Determined in conquering this jagged path, Arthur considers, just maybe, a child’s innocence should be snuffed without mercy, buried with dewy eyes weeping blind at the owner’s grave.

Youth’s presence, delayed.   
  


Thus, there was a play.

But, no child. 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Sending « You dumb bitch » to myself for attempting to write yet ANOTHER multi-chap fic all the while anticipating the struggle of crafting a sequential narrative with an unambiguous conclusion. In this essay, I will...


End file.
